Does Your Intellectual Capital Walk Out the Door at Night?

You know how people always say that the value of a business walks out the door at night? They are right on one level. Human capital is a critical part of every business, more so all the time as we move more deeply into the knowledge economy.

But there is more to intellectual capital than what’s inside your employees’ heads. And if you worry about your value walking out the door, you better understand the rest of the story.

The other critical components of intellectual capital are relationship capital and structural capital. The key to preserving value from your people (human capital) and your network (relationship capital) is to build structural capital.

click on graphic to see larger version

Structural capital is operationalized knowledge that remains in a company when everyone goes home at night. Examples of this are training systems,work processes, software and information technology (IT).

But the real reason to build structural capital isn’t just  to protect your knowledge or make your employees redundant but, rather, to help your employees be smarter every day when they walk back in the door.

And here’s the best news of all: structural capital is an infinite resource. Once it’s developed, it isn’t hard to scale–just print more books or add more users. Can’t ask for a better way to fuel growth in an organization.

In a recent presentation explaining this to a client, the GM asked us for a “structural capital gap analysis.” Why didn’t I think of that? We’re working on it now and are creating an approach that will become part of our firm’s structural capital. Win-win-win. The magic of the knowledge economy.